I spent half the previous night fighting in the concrete jungle and then painting just for the sake of it; without any hidden motives, traps, or weapons to make. Just something to take my mind off death, brutality, and all the other crap I was involved in. The other half, plus part of the morning, I used to sleep in my Earth bed for a change. It was a long slumber by my usual standards, unfortunately devoid of any dreams I could remember, but comforting nonetheless. It reminded me a bit of what it felt like to be human—grounded in the reality of bodily necessities.

  As I woke up, however, I processed everything that had happened: the declarations Peter and Nick made, and the one I felt deep within myself as well. I needed to finish what I’d started by getting Jason out of the Solitary Twin, which would most likely be impossible if the God inhabiting its walls was still inside. And that meant I’d have only one chance to do it right, when it was finally called to answer before the court.

  But I needed a plan. One that would let me go inside and take Jason out while also giving me an alibi, proof that it wasn’t me who freed him. And all of that required preparation.

  Something I was pretty good at.

  The alibi had to come first. It was the easiest piece to set in place, too. All I really needed was for the Shattered to know where I was—and if I was on Earth when Jason disappeared, I obviously couldn’t be in Ideworld, right? Conveniently, one of the most important Shattered was already here, playing dress-up. If Joan believed I was on Earth, I’d be golden. And any questioning they might attempt later, I could wiggle through with the proper application of my artificial brains.

  Yes, plural: brains.

  I might have lied when I said I only painted for fun during the night. I meant, I definitely lied about that, but it was fun, at least. One of the things I made was an additional paper-maché brain. A bit of water, a pile of old sketches I didn’t need anymore, soaked into pulp with glue to keep it all together. Then mashed, shaped, and textured until it looked brain-like enough. There was something fitting about making it from my old drawings, from my ideas turned into a representation of the organ that produced them. That alone boosted its verisimilitude.

  Once it dried, I painted it. Still brainy, but with more color, more abstract. Every fold and ridge drew from the full spectrum, laid out with enough care for anatomical structure to satisfy my soul. It was the “creative brain,” after all.

  And now, standing in the kitchen mixing salt, flour, and baking powder in a bowl, it was that same artistic brain that helped me craft the real plan: the best possible solution to the whole mess.

  And making a cupcake felt like the one fool-proof alibi.

  At first, I just hoped that my special ingredients would be enough to make it work, but then I grabbed my phone and called Ariana to confirm things. She was helpful enough to promise she’d preserve the cupcake with her magic, make it last longer, and even add some flavor. I bet she didn’t mind that this also meant I was going solo into the den of the beast, though it was hard to tell with her. She often acted like a mother hen to everyone around her, yet I still believed she’d put her own child first, no matter what.

  All I needed now was to make the batch and ask—or force—Nick to eat at least one as a test, and another when the time came. I was really counting on him being more willing to help than repulsed by what I’d put inside the sweets.

  “What’s that smell?” Sophie asked when she emerged from her room.

  “I’m making cupcakes I need to save Jason.”

  “You’re doing cup… to do… what?” Her brain short-circuited.

  “Yeah. Cupcakes for your boyfriend to eat.”

  “Nick? Why him? Can’t I get one? They smell delicious.”

  “Oh no. Only him. Sorry, girl. You wouldn’t want to eat them knowing what’s inside.”

  “This is some gross magic stuff?”

  “You can call it that.”

  “Okay then. Just promise me he won’t be hurt.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Soph. But I have a task for him that will require him to stay here on Earth for the whole process—and away from any danger—so fingers crossed!”

  “I’ll have to get used to constantly living on the edge, won’t I?”

  “I think so.” I replied, and she sat down on the couch, staring at the wall overgrown with plants. She played with the necklace I gave her, the one with a fragment of my own soul core.

  “I prepared the documents to make Hoppers a real company yesterday. Forgot to mention it with everything that happened. We’ll be official soon.”

  “Great news!” I sat down opposite her.

  “And I found that container for you, but I’m waiting to buy it until the company is running.”

  “Thanks, Soph. I hope I won’t need it anytime soon, but it’s better to be ready than sorry.”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to hear about it. Let’s just call it an art project, okay?”

  I laughed. “I like that attitude.” I stood up from my seat. “Can you take out the cupcakes for me and put them on my desk when they’re ready?”

  “Sure. Do whatever it is that you need,” she replied, waving her hand.

  “Thanks. Love you,” I told her as I headed to the bathroom to get my Usagear, now smelling like morning air.

  **********

  I blinked onto the Chinatown bridge, right at the entrance to the concrete jungle, with Lio right by my side, coiled around my arm like a snake. Despite that, I could hardly feel him; his body was mostly shadowlight, while his head rested on my shoulder, right next to my own.

  I looked around, checking for any possible damage left by Penrose’s group, but there was no sign of them at all. They must have packed everything up and left to do whatever he’d asked of them, and they’d done so in relative peace—at least here. I was sure I’d get tangled up in some mess involving them sooner or later, given that Rei was part of that group.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  But I wasn’t here for them, so I moved between the stalls where people were selling all kinds of things, trying not to disturb anyone. Even when someone seemed ready to say something, I noticed that the moment they saw my lóng, they immediately forgot where their tongue was. I wasn’t going to complain.

  I reached the edge of the bridge, jumped onto the wall meant to keep people from falling, squatted, and looked down.

  “Pretty high for me, Lio,” I said, smiling at my cloud serpent. “I know you don’t really care about gravity, but for me it’s still a force that can break me.”

  He purred softly while I watched the people below, walking along the street that seemed overall pretty normal considering we were in Ideworld. Some moved in a strange, lagging manner, as if caught in a dream. A few cars moved erratically. But nothing down there screamed danger, besides the fact that it was about ten stories beneath me.

  I straightened and looked up for a second at the mirrored city hanging upside down overhead, wondering how the hell it didn’t cast a constant shadow on everything below. Then my human brain told my body to step forward.

  Falling wasn’t a foreign sensation to me. I learned how to do it when I was thirteen. Clasped to a rope, I jumped from taller and taller places until fear simply gave up on trying to claim me.

  The only thing that changed now was that instead of a rope, I had two strong air turbines painted on the palms of my hands—ones I let become real, along with nuclear reactors to power them—just a few seconds before hitting the ground.

  They worked like makeshift parachutes, cushioning my fall and slowing my descent. When I turned them off a moment after they manifested their power, I landed in complete silence on the pavement.

  I was on Bowery Street now, which meant I had to go south until I found Worth, then head straight until the New York County Supreme Court appeared on my left.

  I was used to these streets—our apartment was really close by—but with each step I found myself noticing small changes. Even the souvenir shop at the corner of those two streets, so simple in Earth’s version of New York, was more grandiose here. “Welcome to Chinatown, I love NY,” normally printed on a plain sign, was now a flowing, neon-like billboard that looked like it was about to start playing a kung-fu movie any second.

  People were mostly normal, though occasionally a Changed wandered by. The ones I saw weren’t drastically misshapen. One had a third eye in the center of his forehead that never opened. A girl walked past with an unnaturally large ass, her jeans barely managing to contain it. A man’s skin shimmered faintly with scales. A few others moved quietly, almost shy about their transformations.

  I passed a children’s playground on my right, pretty empty because of the cold winter weather. Only one kid played there; sliding down the slide, circling back, repeating the loop over and over. His brown skin, constant smile, and persistence reminded me of Malik, pressing pause on my sense of wonder and playing something more like the blues instead. I hated that feeling; of loss that could have been prevented.

  A block later, I passed a tattoo parlor with interesting art pieces on display. I remembered this place from our side, but the craftsmanship and artistry there had never been up to my standards. They were good, but nothing I’d be happy to carry on my skin for the rest of my life. This, however, was something several levels higher than even I could produce. Of course, all I saw were photos of finished inks displayed behind the windowpane, but they were breathtaking.

  The lines were clean and purposeful, guiding the eye through each design, immediately grabbing attention and directing it. The colors were lively, not dulled as tattoos often are. Everything was done in a semi-realistic style, with just hints of an underlying anime bias—eyes slightly larger than natural, legs longer—but whenever figures were present, they were captured in action poses, moving with perhaps the best depiction of motion I’d ever seen rendered in two dimensions.

  Secrets of the Skin was the name of the place. As I finally moved on, I made another decision as well. I would come back here when time wasn’t tightening a rope around Jason’s neck, and I would get tattoos from this artist.

  A depiction of my Domain, me in my suit, working on images, with Liora nearby. My spellbook, Ella, and Noxy. Everything I could need to summon, and my lifeline teleportation destination, all combined into one design. I’d paint it beforehand and hand it over as reference.

  It would have to go on my back, upper or lower. Most likely lower, since I often wore dresses that exposed my upper back when I was pretending to be someone else, and covering a tattoo would just be extra work.

  It was nice to think about art and preparations, but I finally reached the courthouse, a building I had seen from afar even though on my natural side the way to it would have been partially obscured by the trees in the small park square. Here, it rose unobstructed, sticking out far above everything else.

  I stopped in front, suddenly feeling small beneath its deliberate grandeur. The columns rose in a disciplined row, pale stone shafts fluted and steady, each capped with ornate Corinthian capitals that caught the light. They felt less decorative than declarative, as if they were holding up not just the building, but the very idea of order itself. My eyes traveled upward along them, following their vertical insistence until they met the heavy entablature stretching calmly from end to end.

  Above that, the roofline asserted its authority. Broad and weighty, it was edged with crisp classical lines that seemed carved to last longer than any of the people passing below. Crowning it were sculpted figures, solemn and unmoving against the sky just as I remembered them from Earth. Here, however, they felt unmistakably allegorical, embodying abstract ideals rendered human in stone.

  As I watched them, I saw them observe me in return. Their gaze was piercing, though not directed at me so much as through me, fixed on something larger and longer-lived. In that moment, the entire fa?ade felt like a frozen judgment evoking the sense that I stood before something that demanded silence and respect by its mere existence.

  Those figures, each wearing a toga and holding some piece of legislature, kept watching me even as I sat down on the bench and painted my anchor. I might be back here sometime in the future, but this one wasn’t meant for me. It would be Peter who would be sent here to take part in the process and observe the gods and the people discussing the merits of kidnapping to turn people into the Shattered.

  He was better at law, more durable than me, and most likely still able to reach his Domain from that point if I were to die, which gave me the comfort of not stranding him on this side. And of course, he had already agreed to take part and play this role, while keeping my eye-card on him to give me a relay of what was happening inside.

  That part of the plan seemed easy enough, just like my alibi.

  Getting Jason out, though, could be problematic. I expected him to be guarded, and teleporting him out at least partially difficult. Which meant that I should prepare for a fight.

  “How do I even prepare for the total unknown, Lio?” I asked my lóng as I finished the painting and closed the spellbook. I put both of my arms on the backrest of the bench and looked into the sky. Liora, on the other hand, phased through my arm and appeared sitting like a cat on my knees in his fully physical form.

  “I’d need to do everything with my suit covered, that’s for sure. I don’t want to be immediately recognized. The fight with Brawn had shown me that being an unknown factor is a power I don’t want to dismiss.” He flared green as I talked, and also nodded his small head in agreement. His whiskers kept moving, as if he was trying to measure something.

  “I will also need a good painting stored within Noxy. It could be another frame, to capture one of those bastards, or rather create a safe space for me. Maybe both, if I did it in the right spot. Would a door frame work for that? I bet it could, but I don’t even know if there are doors in there. That’s how deep into the unknown I will go.” I sighed. “It’s not good, Lio, but I have the tools to survive a lot. Training in subterfuge…” I started, and my creative mind wandered off toward that space I quite liked.

  “What do you think about that, Anansi?” I asked, whispering into the air.

  [Seems both risky and like something that might work.] My anima answered, and I agreed with her on that. All I would need at first would be contact lenses, and I could fake being the Shattered.

  This would also give me cover over the suit, as I would just go in without it and summon it only when it was absolutely necessary.

  “They say that justice is blind, guys,” I said to both Anansi and Lio. “I hope it will make all those in the Solitary Twin blind as well.”

  [So you decided on that course of action.]

  “Yes. I will be going into that tower fully naked.”